(no subject)

[camwyn]

Found out what the deal was with that mallard with the green feathers on top of his head. Apparently that's what you get when mallards hybridize with the American Black Duck. https://www.birds.cornell.edu/crows/domducks.htm had several photographs of ducks with the same feather coloration, and it appears that females of species closely related to mallards are quite happy to hook up with mallard males, so hybrids like that happen. Good to know. I'll be tagging my lists properly from now on.

Comments

[neotoma]

Ducks are notorious for hybridizing -- they can even manage it across genera, apparently.

[camwyn]

Given the subject of the 2003 Ig Nobel Prize for Biology, I shouldn't have been surprised. It would appear that mallards, like humans and certain species of livebearer fish, will attempt to get it on with anything that will hold still long enough.

[derien]

I thought I saw a mallard / domestic white duck hybrid the other day, and Eor scoffed, but that sounds as if it might have been possible. They were in the road in front of a house, waddling like they lived there. Mallard-looking up front, lots of white feathers in the aft.

[neotoma]

Most domestic ducks are the descendants of mallards, so a hybrid wouldn't be surprising at all.

It's when you see merganser hybridized with something that isn't a merganser that you go 'wtf?!'

[derien]

Well, the Bangor Daily News site is not a happy place for me - I get bombarded with a million popups to the point I can't see the pic you wanted to show me. But, are you in Maine, too?